1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to an apparatus and method for managing a message in a mobile communication system, and in particular, to an apparatus and method for selectively receiving a regional information message (i.e., a message that is available and effective only in a specific zone) at a mobile station (MS) in a mobile communication system and for automatically deleting the received regional information message from the MS when the MS leaves the specific zone.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, the use of mobile communication system is rapidly increasing with the development of communication technologies broadening the functions of mobile communication terminals. In addition to a call function, mobile communication terminals provide a variety of additional functions such as digital camera function, MP3 function, phonebook function, and short messaging service (SMS) function.
With a rapid increase in the use of a mobile communication service, the SMS function ranks, along with the call function, as the main function of mobile communication terminals. In addition to the SMS message, a multimedia messaging service (MMS) message is developed and used to transmit multimedia data such as music data and image data.
With rapid increase in the use of SMS message, mobile communication terminals are used to transmit messages related to advertisements or announcements for a specific zone. Hereinafter, the messages related to advertisements or announcements for a specific zone will be simply referred to as “regional information messages”. When a mobile communication terminal is located in the specific zone, the regional information messages are then transmitted to the mobile communication terminal.
The regional information messages are available and effective only in the specific zone. Therefore, when the mobile communication terminal leaves the specific zone, the regional information messages become unnecessary. These unnecessary regional information messages may lead to lessen the memory capacity of the mobile communication terminal. In this case, a user of the mobile communication terminal is inconvenienced because he/she must manually delete the unnecessary regional information messages one by one.
What is therefore required is a technique for selectively receiving the regional information messages only in a desired zone and for automatically deleting the unnecessary regional information messages.